Chapter Four:
In the morning, the doctor rose before Starling again. He looked in on her from her bedroom doorway. She was still deep in sleep. After these first two days, he now knew it took her at least an hour to enter a deep state. She hovered near sleep, tossing and sighing, until she finally slipped over. Through the night, her breath would catch, hold, rapidly thump in and out. He considered suggesting she leave on a light for her night terrors, but doubted she would take the advice. She may not be afraid of him, but she was certainly scared of the dark.
Returning to his room, he dressed in work clothes and strolled down their drive to the country road. The farm with the milk cow had been the second driveway past theirs. The first driveway dead-ended into a wall of kudzu vines. Clarice had told him this farm was abandoned but they should keep an eye for marijuana growers or meth labs taking over. It amused him to imagine their role as neighborhood watch.
At the next drive, he stood a moment, letting his senses open. Clarice was right; he must be cautious. There was more at stake than his own entertainments now. The cow's acidic odors were powerful, but there was also waste and decay-the smell of human shit and dusty bones. He walked quickly under the trees, falling into darkness.
The barn came before the house. At the sagging door, he waited for his eyes to adjust, but took inventory. An old woman was milking the cow. She smelled of potato starch and used Bengay regularly. There was another woman in the dark-not a woman, but a girl. She wet her bed; he could smell the sour urine on her skin. Repulsed by the child's lack of sanitation, he focused on the old woman.
"Excuse, ma'am," he said. He dared use a more formal tone than his role demanded. "If I may interrupt-"
"Who dat?" croaked a rasping voice.
"My name is Don-T Lambert," Lecter said, wincing to himself. "I'm your new neighbor, down the road a piece."
"Yep," she said, "I seen new folks was about."
He sensed the child coming closer. Sunlight from the wall's cracks cut bars across her lumpy, immature body. Although he had no interest in gaining her acquaintance, he said, "Hello."
The young teen gave off a snorting sound, perhaps meant as a greeting.
The old woman said, "Speak up, child." She creaked up from her stool, slapping the cow's strong flank. When the girl said nothing more, she introduced herself as Mrs. Ava Kreet and her granddaughter, Michelley. The doctor expressed delight in meeting them, but his attention was on the bucket of milk. Would Mrs. Kreet please sell him some? Did she make butter?
She exchanged puzzled looks with the moon-faced girl. "What you want this for? The sto's got all you want."
"No, it does not, ma'am. You have exactly what I want."
"I 'spose I could part with some milk, an' I do make butta," Mrs. Kreet said. "Not much, the boys don't like the taste; they prefer margarine."
"Such a shame," Lecter said, hating these men before encountering them. "Feel free to make more."
He didn't have to wait long before meeting the other Kreets. "Who dat?" Two pipe thin silhouettes stood in the doorway. The doctor wondered if these people always started conversations this way.
Mrs. Kreet called out, "It's one a' the new folks," and Lecter stepped forward, reminding himself to stomp down solidly.
The two men were obviously father and son, both equally ugly. He recognized the boy, Dwayne, as the young man who leered at Clarice the day before.
"Pleased to meet you," Lecter said, shaking the hand of Earl, the father. His fingers were bent from some manual labor, the skin stained tobacco brown with deep grooves black from filth. It took all of Lecter's control not to wipe his hand afterwards. Then he addressed Dwayne. "We've already had to pleasure, right?"
Dwayne sneered back at him and spit a long brown stream of juice which landed beside the doctor's boot. "'Spose so." He made a grand production of looking around Lecter. "Where's that purty daughter of your's?"
Lecter spit his own saliva close to the younger man's feet. "You must have missed it. That's my wife."
"Lucky feller," Dwayne said.
His grandmother watched him with narrowed eyes. "You been chasin' tail again?"
Dwayne shoved his raw-boned hands deep into the pockets of his dirty jeans. "Ah, Granny," he whined.
Lecter noted the outline of his penis was thin and short when he pulled the fabric taut.
"I'm sure he won't do it again," the doctor said. "Wouldn't be neighborly."
This seemed to be a good parting junction, but he hadn't counted on Southern determination. The menfolk wandered off, but Granny held him there with offers of powdered sugar donuts, strong coffee, a taste of her butter-when she heard that he planned to raise chickens, she offered some of her own best layers, for a good price.
By now she'd led him to the ramshackle house. Two young pregnant women, appearing to be barely older than Michelley, lounged across a truck's bench seat on the porch. They both pulled themselves upright with Mrs. Kreet's footfall on the steps, but neither was introduced to Lecter, and he could not guess their relationship to the rest of the Kreets.
Mrs. Kreet ignored them too and begin questioning Lecter as she poured him a cup of coffee which was wickedly dark and strong. "You all related to the Nortons? Never heard of that place sallin'."
Her sharp eyes were pale like Clarice's, despite the whites being webbed with red veins.
"It was a private sale." He forced a deep swallow of coffee down, trying to empty the cup.
"'cause Earl was hopin' to get that back wood-"
"He and the boys been huntin' out that way?" Lecter asked.
Her sly smile was much like Clarice's too. "Maybe."
"They should be careful. We gonna be doin' shootin' now and then," he said as a warning.
She tipped her head. Despite the mass of wrinkles weighing down her skin, the bones were good on her skull and the pure white hair was pulled down in a simple bun.
"Sug Norton left no direct kin," she mused. "There was a girl child, niece I think, but she died near like thirty years ago-"
Lecter gulped the grounds-filled dregs of his cup and started to rise.
"Sug was my cousin on my Momma's side. I'd hoped he'd offer the land up to us, but he was always tight with his sister-Her girl's husband got the property, if I 'member right..."
"As I said, a private sale," the doctor said firmly, hoping that he'd thwarted the old woman.
Stymied for the moment, Mrs. Kreet next offered him had some canned tomatoes left over from last summer, the boys preferring french fries for their vegetable-he finally escaped, an hour after coming down the drive, with a bucket of milk and two jars of tomatoes under his arm.
oxoxo
Clarice woke with her usual sudden rush of consciousness. This morning she did not find the doctor perched like a gargoyle on the table. She was immediately concerned, hurrying to check his room and the porches. She found a note taped to the gunbox, written in his difficult handwriting.
'My dear Clarice, I have stepped out. I shall return shortly.'
First she checked the guns; none were gone. Then the kitchen drawers-one filet knife was missing. Blind with worry, she ran to the garage, but both vehicles were there. She drove to the end of the driveway when she spotted him coming with his parcels.
"Where the hell did you go?" she demanded to know through the car's window.
"I paid a call," he said, carefully placing the bucket on the passenger floorboards. "To line up fresh dairy products. I've also secured a set of laying hens and a rooster as well."
Clarice turned the car around and pulled up beside him. "Then I guess I better get the runs ready," she said, spraying him with gravel as she roared back to the house.
True to her word, she was at work in the barn when he finished strolling down the drive. His milk sat on the front stoop beside the jars of tomatoes. Let her play farm maid, he thought, he'd start on the plastering.
When Clarice came in, hot and sweaty from her work in the barn, she found the living room dusty and in disarray.
She tried talking sense to Lecter: "Doctor, you're not really gonna do this, are you? We will be leaving in a matter of months. Why in the world should we turn some farmer's shack into mansion for the next group of squatters who will come through?"
He didn't look away from his task of tearing loose wallpaper. "Because I live here and I shall not be surrounded by ugliness, even for a few months."
"Fucking Christ," she said. "It's gonna make a damn mess. For days."
"There's only these few rooms. It'll be finished before you know it."
"Leave my room out of this," she said. "I'll paint over that paper and be fine with it." She watched him shove the wadded wallpaper into a Hefty bag and shook her head. She wasn't going to help him with this. She tried again. "What's so important about having a smooth plaster surface?"
"I will need canvases to paint upon."
"What the hell?" she groaned.
He smiled. "Yes, my dear. Remember, I told you that I shall decorate these walls like the monks' cells of Santa Croce." Lecter stepped closer and she bent back like a willow. "Like those celibates, we may lie in our beds at night, diverting our attentions with pure, ecclesiastical thoughts."
Clarice stormed out, back to her tasks in the barn.
oxoxo
She resisted for a few days. First she plowed an acre of the old fields up and harrowed, then planted her seeds and the delicate starts. She did careful pruning on the old fruit trees, encouraging the few blooms on their tortured, hoary limbs. The chicken runs were completed within a day and the birds settled into their new home. Her bedroom remained relatively clean, but the rest of the house was a mess from dust and the whining miter saw which appeared after another trip to the hardware store. The only thing to do was help to get the job finished as quickly as possible.
At least the doctor appeared to be a man who could follow directions. He carefully referred to instructions that he'd downloaded, measured twice and cut once, and used his safety goggles. Only when she watched him slice through the lath boards with the saw did she find herself flinching. His reattached left thumb held the board steady for the blade while she kept the end of the long piece level. Seeing his thumb so close to the whirling saw, she had to address the issue that had been bothering her for a while.
When he had finished the cut and they carried the length to the wall, she asked, "Just out of curiosity, how did Barney get a surgeon for you? I know they checked every hospital and doctor in a hundred mile radius."
The doctor smiled and shot the nails into the lath with a nail gun, another acquisition. "Barney is quite useful," he said. "He's very observant. He had noticed that a married plastic surgeon at his hospital had picked up a nasty habit, or rather, two nasty habits. Fucking a surgical nurse and using pilfered drugs with her."
"You let this man operate on you?"
"It was unnerving, true. I wouldn't allow them to put me completely under. First because they had no proper anesthesiologist, second, because his specialty is facelifts for older socialites, not vein and nerve reattachment. Then there was the fact they were strung out and fearful." Finished with the nailing, he wiggled his fingers as if in wonder.
She captured his hand and turned it palm up to check the scar. "You made a clean cut, considering I was trying to pull your hand away."
He fought the urge to brush free the tendril of hair clinging to her cheek, not wanting to disturb her examination. He flexed the thumb. "I cut at the joint, making it a fairly routine reattachment. I have full movement-"
"Can you still play?"
"Not well, but I hope for improvement with practice." He scanned the small living room. "If we got a piano, I could see how it's progressing."
"Yeah, that'd be great," she said witheringly. "Let's order a Steinway-" He flinched at that brand name, "-and have a piano tuner come out to set it up."
She looked around too. "There's no room; don't even think about it."
"We shall find a solution," he said.
She had left her hand resting across his palm and he stroked it with his thumb. "I have area of extra-sensitivity, here-" He smoothed her own thumb with the left side of his. "And no sensation here." He turned the thumb and slid up a protruding vein along the back of her hand.
"I tried to stop you," she murmured and he leaned in closer to catch her words.
"It was something I had to do," he said and she finally pulled her hand away. "We owe Barney for more than my thumb, don't we?"
It was her turn to slyly smile. "Reaching out to him was a risk, but I hoped he had something that would bring us into the same room. How did he get his hands on that video-did he tell you? Our conversation was brief and fraught with tension. He only promised to try and set up a situation."
"He did mention that he'd dropped by Verger's that night. I assume the real story is that Verger hired him to 'nurse' me. Mason had planned to keep me alive for a day or so, milk as much anguish as possible."
When she winced, Lecter added softly, "Foolish man thought he could make me cry and beg like some five year old he was sodomizing."
"What's wonderful about pressuring Barney is that you don't have to be specific," she said. "He's guilty of something all the time, so vague threats go a long way. And damn if I wasn't right this time."
Lecter changed the subject: "What sort of things did Mason Verger say to you?"
She began picking through the pile of lumber, seeking the right length for the next piece. Distracted, she said, "What?"
"You said that you met Mason. Barney mentioned that Verger had quizzed him extensively about you and our relationship."
She lay the wood down. "I figured he was up to something the minute I met him. That and Paul lurking right outside the door as I was told to go to Verger's estate. James Bond, Paul was not."
"Certainly not," he said.
"Mason told me about his disfigurement, how it happened. In graphic detail," she said. Lecter's cool blue eyes showed no shame; not that she expected them to. "I'm not sure, perhaps he hoped to make me feel sorry for him."
The doctor settled onto the edge of the drop cloth-draped kitchen table. "That sounds like him. What else?"
"Nothin' much," she said stubbornly.
"Clarice-"
"You gonna finish this up by supper? 'cause I'm tired of plaster dust in my food." She began sorting through the toolbox in a determined manner.
He stared at her bowed head but when she did not raise it, nodded to himself and returned to his task.
oxoxo
The doctor gave the living room wall one last pass with his trowel. All the plastering was finally finished. Clarice watched from the doorway, shaking her head at his folly.
"Now it will need to set," he said.
"In this humidity, that'll take a few days." She wiped her damp bangs off her forehead. "Can't believe it's this hot and muggy already and it's only May. I forgot what a hellhole it can be back here in the hills."
Lecter washed his hands at the kitchen sink. "Your lack of optimism has become trying." He dried his hands and rolled down his shirt sleeves. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"
"I noticed asparagus has sprouted out back of that far tool shed. There must have been a patch put in by my great-uncle. Thought I'd pick some for dinner."
He smiled in delight. "May I join you?"
She shrugged and turned away. "If you want."
He bit back another comment on her dour nature, and found his ball cap.
"If they're still young, we could bury some stalks and make white asparagus," he suggested, following her through the swaying waist-high weeds.
"Does it taste any different?" she asked, glancing back at him.
"That's not the point," he said tersely.
She chuffed a laugh and kept walking, her bucket swinging at her side.
After they'd gathered about two dozen stalks, she discovered a horseradish plant growing against the rotting shed wall.
"Have to give it some more time, though," she cautioned. "Let the leaves get larger before chopping off any of the root."
"I shall wait," he promised.
The forest's trees came to the edge of the outbuildings. Clarice wandered toward the dark cover. He noticed that she always seemed to be drawn to woods.
He let her go ahead and picked some wild greens which were thick and lush around the asparagus trench. He'd need to bring a hoe and clear this back. He was finding there was much to occupy their time; no risk of boredom.
He also found that he was concerned when Clarice was out of his sight. Every day, she had gone for a run, despite he pointing out that it was not fitting for their roles. The thump of her footfalls on the stoop at her return always gave him relief.
He had to follow her into the woods. She had not gone far.
She sat cross-legged on a carpet of wild violets under an ancient chestnut tree. A single, tiny bloom twirled in her fingers.
He sank onto a fallen log across from her her, pulled out a case and extracted a Panatela cigar and a lighter. Clarice had provided these as well as his other personal items.
"I'm surprised that you seem to be enjoying your time here," he noted.
"Why so?" she asked, squinting up at him.
He waved a hand around, breaking up the swirl of blue smoke. "Surely you saw your career in the FBI, your very nice townhouse, as a step up. And now this shanty, the labor in the dirt, as a tumble back."
"When I was hunting a dealer, or even a killer who knew we were after them, I'd look to their home place. Something about being chased makes a body want to go to familiar ground."
"Then was it wise for us to come here? Your home place?"
"I tol' you, no one knows."
"But someone may figure it out, given the great motivation you gave them."
She simply looked back at him. Her normally pale eyes absorbed the green foliage around her, going dark as the ancient moss which was her cushion.
"Or perhaps you were hoping to recreate Eden. Own little paradise." He took a deep tug on his cigar, amused at the idea.
"You're no creation of God," she said. "Unless Eve kept the snake and tossed out Adam."
He ignored her judgment. "Perhaps you're right. We're not of the Old Testament. Much too tiresome. Let's call you Pandora, my dear, trying to keep the lid tight on your jar of evil."
She shrugged and stood, unfolding her long legs with unconscious grace. "Best get back and cook up that dinner."
He remained on the log a few more moments, finishing his cigar. But as he rose, the breeze shifted and his strong, pure odor was carried away, replaced by cheap, formaldehyde-laced cigarette smoke. He whirled, searching the thick undergrowth for any sign of movement or life.
Nothing.
He would search, but he was unarmed, and the sway of Clarice's bright cropped hair drew him from the darkness into the light. He must have her back in their retreat from the woods.
oxo
Lecter cooked the asparagus with wild garlic and olive oil for a light lunch.
Clarice joined him at the table as he put the plates down.
He watched her delicately lap the spears from her fork. "I'm happy to see you eat fresh, green vegetables. Your previous dining habits have been painful for me to observe."
"Do you know everything about me?"
"I learn something new about you every day. That's why it's enjoyable being here."
Irritated, she said, "Stimulate you, like the test monkey in her cage? Or what will happen?"
"We will never know, so it's not worth asking," he said.
He cleared her plate as soon as she'd pushed her chair back and went to the couch, yanked off the drop cloth.
She curled up with a book to read, pointedly ignoring Lecter as he began sketching on his clean canvas of the living room wall. A draped woman's figure, then her own face, appeared. Whether it was the ubiquitous music wafting from the stereo, or the rhythmic scratching of his pencil, or the light rain on the tin roof, she nodded off.
Lecter's lips moved as though he were talking the images onto the wall, and would have appeared to any voyeur to be unaware of Clarice. But he heard every movement and thus saw her; folding her book around her finger, resting her head on the couch arm, brushing a stray lock of hair from her neck, relaxing into sleep. He wondered why it was so easy for her to nap when it took her so long to drop off at night.
He needed to get the full view of his mural. Rejecting the ridiculous Lazy-Boy, he settled beside her on the sofa. Once on the broken down cushion, he felt himself falling asleep as well.
Only a small shift in her body brought him alert. She sighed and stretched a bit, bringing her foot closer. She was barefoot, a common condition that irritated him. He imagined all the damage she could do stepping on a nail or coming upon a snake. Her pale slim foot, with its slender toes, twisted his heart slightly, as it had in the darkness of her apartment. Feet symbolized vulnerability; often hidden, easily damaged. They could be very ugly as well, showing a beautiful woman's inner slothfulness through bunions and hammertoes.
No such ugliness for Clarice's feet, of course. His fingertip traced her arch, light, so not to tickle her, and stroked off the big toe. She sighed again, stretching out further as she relaxed. He stilled, then engulfed her foot in his large hand, swallowing it whole. It was cool but warmed quickly. His damaged thumb caressed her instep with the sensitive side.
His gaze traveled on her bare calf. She wore another pair of her odd cargo-type pants which came to just below the knee. They'd ridden up as she shifted on the couch, revealing her pleasingly sleek kneecaps and strong tendons.
Her long thighs tempted his touch, and he tightened his grip very slightly on her foot, imagining that he was cupping those lithe muscles, drawing her closer to him...
Another sigh and she burrowed her head further into the cradle of her arm. Her breasts, barely restrained by a lightweight bra, stretched her cotton teeshirt in a way which intrigued him, as he could stand before a French nude painting for long minutes, not stimulated in a base sexual way, but how line and form could aliven his nerves.
He remembered one of their early conversations, about watching and coveting. The young Clarice Starling had not been physically striking and yet he'd somehow known that Jack Crawford and Doctor Chilton coveted her. He'd seen it when they'd been brought together to view the video, how all the men in the room, whether openly or covertly, watched her, trying to capture her spirit with their oppressive gazes.
His was the only gaze she would meet. From their first encounter, she looked into his eyes, first with fear and curiosity, then with confidence, even when she was lying to him-a low chuckle escaped at the memory of her duplicity-
She woke, wide eyes staring at him. He felt something he had not felt for many years-guilt; perhaps he was just another dirty old man ogling her after all. He waited for her usual scolding.
Her voice rough from sleep, she said, "Perhaps I could begin a study delving into the mind of the foot fetishist."
"I don't regard feet with any particular preference," he said, recovering his abomb. "I enjoy all body parts." He flashed his small teeth at her and she bared hers back.
She looked pointedly at his hand still holding her foot. He decided not to let it go. He would not be intimidated by her.
She didn't struggle but started talking with that careful lecturing tone he was beginning to find annoying or entertaining, depending on his mood. "Doctor, I suppose it's time that we discussed this-"
Although she turned enough to sit upright, he saw that she wouldn't pull her foot away or show any sort of discomfort, so he might as well take advantage of the situation. "What's 'this', Clarice?" he asked, now beginning to lightly massage her foot.
Her mouth opened to speak, then she closed it again, and actually blushed.
He knew it wasn't from his actions. "What is it, Clarice?"
She said, "I know you...like me, Doctor," and blushed deeper.
He lay her foot on his thigh and smoothed it with his palm as though he could meld it through his pants' fabric into his own flesh. "Yes, Clarice, I hope I may consider you a friend."
She barked one laugh. "I suppose, if you must."
"I must." His gaze met hers. "And do you like me, Clarice?"
The rain hissed on the corrugated metal roof. He watched the confusion work around in her mind as though it was a dark rat in a maze. He gave her foot a slight slap and she jumped.
"It's all right, my dear, take all the time you need to think of an answer."
He gripped her foot one last time to lift it off, but her mouth was opening to speak-then he saw movement on the porch; someone was there. He was instantly alert; was it their watcher from earlier?
Clarice turned her head and then he recognized the thick figure of Michelley Kreet. The girl had been watching them, he was certain, and he cursed his lapse. His usually highly tuned senses were too easily diverted these days.
Clarice called out, "Come on in," and pulled her foot away to rise.
The girl pushed through the screen door with her shoulder and mumbled a greeting. Her wet lank hair clung to her face and her too tight jeans were dark at the thick thighs from rain. A white fat roll peeked out from between her waistband and a shrunken pink top. Lecter smelled semen on her and was repulsed even more than his first meeting with her.
Michelley said, "Granny sent me over wit' some butta." She stuck out her filthy hands holding a package, the homemade butter mercifully well-wrapped in wax paper and then newspaper.
Ungracious, the doctor introduced the girl and took away her package.
"Thank you, Michelley," Clarice said, reacting to the doctor's distaste by being determinedly kind. "Would you like some pop? I got RC."
Lecter slid down into the root cellar through the hallway trapdoor in the floorboards. The girl watched him go with the avid interest of someone who had nothing interesting in her life.
She said, "Sure," so Clarice was forced to open a soda for her. The girl slurped it noisily, suckling on the glass bottle as if she were an overgrown baby. She stared at Lecter's drawing on the wall.
"Did you do dat?" she asked Clarice as Lecter's head rose out of the root cellar opening like an angry rodent.
Clarice said, "No, my husband is the artist in the family."
Painfully slowly, Michelley asked another question, "Is that there Jesus?" pointing to the figure behind the Clarice on the wall.
Clarice saw that he'd gotten far while she'd slept. He was reproducing his drawing of her as shepherd holding a lamb from the Baltimore asylum.
She knew Lecter was close, so she said, "Is it, Don-T?"
"Yes 'um," he purred. "Wit' his flock."
Clarice looked closer. Yes, that was the younger she, shorter hair, face fuller, eyes, sadly, much more idealistic. But the lamb now had small ram's horns and distinctive teeth. She shot him a dirty look over the girl's head and he aped a shrug.
Reading her mind, the girl said, "That sure is a funny lookin' lamb. Boy sheeps don't get their horns 'til later on."
"It's a symbol, child," Lecter said.
Quickly, Clarice said, "Darlin', she don't wanna hear all about
this-"
"Why you drawin' on the walls?" Michelley asked, clueless of the tension in the air. "Wadn't there paper on the walls befor'?"
"Yes, and it was damn ugly," Lecter said. "Besides, these here pictures are like stories. This is the way illiterate people used to learn Bible stories, with pictures on the walls of their church."
The wide, waxy forehead of the girl creased in confusion. "Don't you got a TV? I seen the dish."
Clarice sensed Lecter going still and feared more than anger from him. "Yes, we do. Don-T just likes drawin' pictures, that's all." She steered the girl towards the door. "Now you take that soda, honey, and go thank your granny so much for the butter. We'll swing by and pay her soon enough."
"I don't mind walkin' over. I can bring it anytime. Granny says you want butta and milk-"
"I'll come for it myself, thank you," Lecter said coolly. "We wouldn't want you tripping on a root and spilling the milk."
"I don't spill tha milk," Michelley said, jutting out her chin.
Clarice soothed her. "I'm sure you walk real carefully, but Don-T wants to pay your Granny right off as he gets the stuff. I bet she appreciates the money."
The girl blinked rapidly and yelled, "I wudn't gonna steal the money! I'm no thief!"
"I wasn't sayin' that," Clarice said, looking hopelessly to Lecter.
He took matters in hand. "Now you get on home, Michelley, and thank your Granny," he said, ignoring her outburst.
Suddenly docile, the girl went through the door he held open for her without another protest.
Clarice stood in the doorway, watching Michelley's shuffling retreat up their darkening driveway.
Lecter came up behind her. "Don't think about it," he warned.
"What?" she said with studied casualness.
"Trying to save that child from whatever is happening to her."
"She's the second sign that something isn't right around here," Clarice pointed out.
He chose not to add even more details that he'd noticed at the Kreet house.
She cut her eyes at him. "But that's your style, right? Why should you care what someone ruining another life, perhaps preparing to take lives?"
He refused to let that pass. "I stopped Mason Verger."
"In your own indomitable way," she drawled.
He was pushed to add: "And I stopped Paul."
"From what?" she demanded. "Being a prick?"
"Given enough time, he would have tried to rape you. I could see into his mind, my dear, from the first moment I met him ten years ago and saw the manipulation he was capable of. He would have hurt you much more than ruining your career."
Shaking her head, she said: "I would have killed him first-"
"Exactly. And who would have been on the ten most wanted list then?" he pointed out.
She folded her arms and glowered out the door, still not even looking at him.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to talk sense into the young woman. "Her grandmother is related to your great-uncle. Mrs. Kreet has already asked me about your mother and father, and how we came to have the property. If she sees you, she'll know who you are, false identity or not."
She didn't answer.
"Clarice," he nudged.
"I had forgotten to turn the alarm back on after Sam's visit," she said suddenly, turning to look over his shoulder. "That's why it didn't go off." She frowned with self-incrimination. "I can't make slip-ups like that again."
He watched her go, shaking his head in frustration at her ability to sidestep his attempts to curb her.
When she came back from re-setting the alarms, Lecter was shading the folds of her gown on the wall.
"It looks exactly like the drawing from ten years ago," she said. "That's amazing."
He smiled, but kept working.
She got herself a soda and watched him. "Are you going to do the dome from Florence too? Or wherever we're headed next?"
"I don't think that would be prudent," he said, rocking back on his heels. "But that does remind me of something that has been preying on my mind for all these years apart."
Taking a sip, she asked, "What?"
"Why didn't you come find me in Florence?" He peered up at her. "You and Barney were the only two people who paid attention to the subject matter of my drawings. You had to know that's where I'd be. As each year passed, I expected you to appear before me, gun in hand."
She stared out the window at the rain washing through her freshly planted rows.
"You did find me as soon as they reopened my case."
She finally met his gaze.
"Perhaps you were afraid of the outcome if someone else found me first."
"Someone did, and he paid for it," she pointed out.
He searched her blank face for something more but saw nothing. "I can't believe you had spent ten years, assigned to other departments, ignoring the danger of a free Hannibal Lecter, saying, it's not my job."
She shrugged. "I did my job; I did it well." Placing the half-empty bottle back in the refrigerator, she said, "I'm gonna go furrow some drainage in the cornfield before all my seeds wash away."
He watched her walk to the barn, spine straight, head upright, even
under the downpour. He mused, "I think you do like me, Clarice Starling," before choosing proper pencils and oil crayons and taking them to his bedroom.
Working quickly, he made a fresh drawing behind his door, showing
the young woman as Saint Margaret Mary, holding Christ's burning heart. When finished, he stood the door open again, covering the vivid picture.
End ~ Chapter 4
